Stamps: May '97
Cairo Geniza,
Dead Sea Scrolls
100 years and 50 years since their discoveries

    Issue: May 1997
    Artist: A. Vanooijen
    Souvenir sheet of 2 stamps (90mm x 60mm)
    Stamp size: 30.8mm x 30.8mm
    Printers: E. Lewin-Epstein Ltd
    Printing Method: Offset

eniza, meaning "archive," was originally a place for the storage of valuable objects and written items. In the course of time, the term came to convey the meaning of "hiding" and "concealment". Sacred books, worn out after extensive use, were consigned to cupboards and storage rooms in synagogues, there to be removed for burial in cemetaries. As knowledge of the Hebrew language diminished, the degree of sanctity ascribed to the Hebrew letters increased, and the custom spread of consigning to the Geniza all items written in Hebrew, whether sacred or not.

A hundred years ago, a Geniza was discovered in the Ben Ezra synagogue of Old Cairo (Fustat). It contained hundreds of thousands of pages that had not been removed for burial for about a thousand years. During the second half of the 19th century, it was possible to purchase such ancient Geniza folios in the marketplaces of Egypt.

Two learned women, travelling around the Middle East, were unable to decipher some of the fragments they had purchased. One of the fragments was identified by Professor Solomon Schechter of the University of Cambridge as belonging to the original Hebrew of the Book of Ben Sira, a volume of wise proverbs included in the Apocrypha. Schechter made a journey to Egypt and brought back to Cambridge some 140,000 fragments. Somewhat smaller collections of Geniza items can be found in libraries around the world.

The fragments cover a variety of topics and shed light on every aspect of human activity, from sacred literature and learned works to children's written exercises. The discoveries particularly illuminate the social and cultural activities of Egypt and the Mediterranean Basin between the years 1,000 and 1,250 CE. Discoveries made among the Geniza fragments have included:

  • documents written as early as about 830 CE
  • texts in the handwriting of Moses Maimonides and Yehudah Halevi
  • compositions that in the course of the centuries have been lost to Hebrew literature
  • forgotten versions of prayers
  • documents relating to the history of the area, many of them dealing with relations between Jewish leaders in the Land of Israel and the surrounding communities
  • works written by and about the Karaite Jews
Medeival copies of the Damascus Document have also been identified in the Geniza. Fifty years after the discovery of that tract, as well as of Ben Sira and a number of other such works, important earlier versions were found among the Scrolls from the Judean Desert.

The large number of subjects represented in the fragments from the Cairo Geniza, together with the fact that they cover a period of about a thousand years, have made a major impact on historical descriptions of the Middle East and of the Jews and their culture.

Prof. Menahem Ben-Sasson
Hebrew University
Jerusalem

The Dead Sea Scrolls

The first seven scrolls were discovered in 1947 by a Beduin shepherd in a cave near Hirbat Wumran near the Dead Sea. The shepherd, seeking a lost goat, threw a pebble down a crevice in the rock and hit a ceramic jar. When he entered the cave with a friend, they found large jars, fully intact, housing leather scrolls. These scrolls found their way to an antiquities dealer in Bethlehem. Professor Sukenik, an archeologist from the Hebrew University, purchased three of the scrolls (the Thanksgiving Scroll; the War Scroll and the Isaiah Scroll [Ms b]) prior to Israel's War of Independence. The four remaining scrolls (the Community Rule; the Commentary of Habbakuk; the Isiah Scrolls [Ms a]; and Genesis Apochryphon) found their way to the United States, and in 1954, Professor Y. Yadin, Sukenik's son, purchased them and returned them to Israel. And so it transpired that in 1955 all the scrolls were brought together again, to be housed years later in the Shrine of the Book at the Israel Museum.

In addition, thousands of fragments of hand-written manuscripts were also discovered, most of them written on parchment, some on papyrus. Despite the poor condition of these scrolls, researchers managed to restore 800 documents of various sizes -- and continue to decipher, research and publish them.

For the first time in history, we had discovered the remains of the library of a Jewish sect (Essenes?) from the end of the Second Temple period (150BCE - 70CE). We have their copies of all of the books of the Bible (except for the scroll of Esther) as well as many of the Apochryphal and Pseudepigraphical books and original writings of the sect, hitherto unknown.

Fifty years after they were first discovered, the Dead Sea scrolls have proven to be a turning point in the research of the history of the Jewish people. They provide a link between Biblical Israel and the Jewish culture of the period from the Mishna to the Talmud.

Dr Adolfo Roitman
The Shrine of the Book
Israel Museum